The Stigma of being illegitimate & female in 1800

[Jeuel]

Coombs

Regarding Ruth Barnes I haven't actually explored the possibility of maintenance orders yet - will put it on my to do list when I next get up to Norwich.

[coombs]

There could be a papertrail for Ruth Barnes. If you do find a maintenance order then you at least have a potential father.

[Plummiegirl]

A lot would depend on where you came from and the class you were born into.

Our ancestors who were "common" ordinary folk, would unless very religious have had no problem with illegitimacy as many of them were probabyly never married in the first place or only married after 1st child was born.

But middle or upper class would have been totally different - an illegitimate child & its mother would in all probability have been turned out of the house (think of the beginning of Oliver Twist) and told never to darken their doorstep again.  The stigma in these families would have been horrendous, not only for the unfortunate daugther, but all her siblings would have been "tarred with the same brush" and would have found it almost impossible to find suitable husbands and those who were willing to marry these sisters would have not been the most salubrious of characters.  The parents would have been shunned by their contemporaries, and this could even have resulted in financial ruin for the family if people stopped "trading" with them in any wasy through banking or retail.

In out much more enlightened times, we do tend to be so far removed from this horror that it is often hard for us to comprehend.  Even as late as the 60's & 70's it was still a problem, and I would imagine in some Catholice countries (like Southern Ireland) that the stigma is just as bad now as it was then.

[coombs]

That 3xgreat grandmother had an illegitimate child in 1863 and left the Sussex village shortly after to move to London.

[sarahsean]

Hi everyone,

Very interesting reading this topic.  My great grandmother was illegitimate but it was never discussed. I never knew her but my mother did mention that she had a different name on her birth cert and we kind of deduced it from there.

Plummie girl i think you are wrong about illegitamacy being a stigma in Ireland today.  My brother in law is living with a girl who has a child who is not his and he is very happy to do so. He adores the child as his own and his parents are fine with it to. They just said everyone seems to have a child and be unmarried these days.  Unless you are a staunch catholic family i don`t think it is an issue. To be honest Ireland is only catholic in name these days and has greater things to worry about.

However as you rightly said in the past when the catholic church had more power it was a different story.

I  could well imagine how some women who had illegitamate children in the past however felt they had to move in order to escape the shame and that by moving away they would give their child a better future.

have a lovely weekend everyone
Sarah

[Jeuel]

Coombs

I think it unlikely, I have a feeling if Ruth was maintained by a father she would have named him on her marriage cert, but its worth investigating.

I think most family historians will have found at least a handful of illegitimate births in their trees - and a lot of baptisms that came suspiciously close to weddings!

[LoneyBones]

Yet going back further and higher up....the bar sinister on a family crest denotes a bastard branch of a family. Also, there were many families who boasted the Fitz on the front of their family name.

Leonie.

[coombs]

Coombs

I think it unlikely, I have a feeling if Ruth was maintained by a father she would have named him on her marriage cert, but its worth investigating.

I think most family historians will have found at least a handful of illegitimate births in their trees - and a lot of baptisms that came suspiciously close to weddings!

When you say suspiciously close do you mean after of before the weddings?

[RJ_Paton]

Also, there were many families who boasted the Fitz on the front of their family name.

Originally Fitz simply meant "son of" it was only much later that it was used in some cases to show that a child had a link to powerful or Royal households through illegitimate descendancy. So not every family that had fitz in their surname descended from an illegitimate son.